Morzeny is a major antagonist of the 1963 James Bond film From Russia With Love. He is the director of training for the criminal organization SPECTRE, who is employed to train recruits to become SPECTRE agents.
He was portrayed by the late Walter Gotell, who is best known for playing General Gogol in several other James Bond films.
Biography
Morzeny is first seen in the pre-titles sequence overseeing the training of Red Grant, SPECTRE's most brilliant assassin, to kill James Bond. Morzeny releases a prisoner disguised as MI6 agent James Bond, who attempts to escape before Grant attacks and strangles him. The exercise ends, and the dead man's mask is removed, revealing to the audience that it was in fact an impersonator.
When Colonel Rosa Klebb, SPECTRE Number 3, arrives on SPECTRE Island, the training site run by Morzeny, for an inspection, Morzeny and his assistant Rhoda act as guides, showing her various agents training on the island. Morzeny then introduces her to Grant, who she recruits for the mission he has been training for the entire time: kill James Bond.
After Grant is killed by Bond about halfway through the film, Morzeny is present at the meeting between Klebb, Tov Kronsteen (Number 5) and Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Number 1). After Blofeld berates Klebb for Grant's failure and subsequent demise, he calls in Morzeny, who activates a mechanism in his shoe which releases a poisoned knife as Blofeld tells Klebb that she knows the penalty for failure. However, Morzeny unexpectedly kicks Kronsteen instead, causing him to collapse from the poison and die. It is then revealed that this was what Blofeld ordered him to do, as it was Kronsteen's plan.
Following Kronsteen's execution, Morzeny is sent to assassinate Bond, together with a fleet of speedboats. After catching up with Bond's boat, Morzeny orders him through a megaphone to surrender. However, Bond responds by dumping several canisters of fuel into the water, and shooting one of them with a flare gun when they float over to the fleet, causing them to be destroyed in a fireball. Morzeny is last seen being set on fire and jumping into the water as he burns to death.
